Stalin and the Question of 'Market Socialism' in the
Soviet
Union After the Second World War

Vijay Singh

The International Seminar 'Stalin Today' takes place in Moscow on
the 77th
anniversary of the October Revolution, after the final disintegration
of the
Soviet Union and when the working class of the states which have arisen
on its
ruins is taking its first steps directed against the renewed Rule of
Capital.
Does Stalin have anything to tell us about these developments ? It is
suggested
here that his last major work, 'Economic Problems of Socialism in the
U.S.S.R.',
is a central point of departure for examining the 'market reforms'
which were
introduced in the Soviet Union after 1953 and for coming to a
conclusion about
their economic and political character.

What was the context of the economic discussions ?

The C.P.S.U. (B) considered that the foundations of Socialist
society had
been laid in the main by 1935. The 18th Congress of the Party thought
that the
transition to Communist society was the path forward for the further
development
of the country. A committee was constituted to draft the new party
programme and
in 1941 the State Planning Committee was requested to formulate a 15
year
programme of economic development designed to lay the foundations of
Communist
society. This perspective was disrupted by the Nazi invasion but it was
resumed
immediately in the post-war period. In 1947 Malenkov noted at the Nine
Party
Informburo Conference that the party was: 'working on the preparation
of a new
programme of the C.P.S.U.(B). The existing programme of the C.P.S.U.(B)
is
clearly out of date and must be substituted by a new one' (Malenkov,
G.M. 'The
Activities of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U. (B)' in For a Lasting
Peace, For a
People's Democracy, Bombay, 1948, p.79.). The task was reiterated
at the
19th Party Congress in 1952. Consonant with this, when presenting his
Report on
the Fourth Five Year Plan to the Supreme Soviet in 1946, N.A.
Voznesensky
recalled the task which had been entrusted to him in 1941. The plan, he
argued:

'envisages the completion of the building of a classless socialist
society
and the gradual transition from socialism to communism. It envisages
the
accomplishment of the basic economic task of the U.S.S.R. namely to
overtake and
surpass the main capitalist countries economically, as regards the
volume of
industrial production per head of the population'
(Voznesensky,N.,'Five-Year
Plan for the Rehabilitation and Development of the National Economy of
the
U.S.S.R. 1946-1950', Soviet News, London,1946, p.10.). Stalin
concurred
with this programmatic perspective as is clear from his response to a
query by a
British correspondent who asked whether he considered it possible to
construct
'Communism in one country'. Stalin replied that it was 'perfectly
possible,
especially in a country like the Soviet Union'. (Stalin, J., 'On
Post-War
International Relations'. Soviet News, London, 1947, p. 13).

Stalin's critique in 'Economic Problems' of the Gosplan economist
L.D.
Yaroshenko indicated that pronounced survivals of the views of Bogdanov
persisted into the post-war period. Yaroshenko did not represent an
isolated
viewpoint. Yudin suggested that there was a veritable trend amongst the
scientific workers, the 'Yaroshenkovschini', which marked a recidivist
throwback
to 'Trotskyism-Bukharinism-Bogdanovism'. Bogdanov it will be recalled
was the
author of influential pre-revolutionary textbooks of political economy.
In
philosophy he adopted the views of Mach and Avenarius which had
prompted Lenin
to pen a reply in the form of 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'. In
1917 he
had supported quasi-Menshevist positions to the effect that the
material
conditions did not exist in Russia for socialist revolution. In the
field of
culture he argued for a 'pure proletarian culture' which negated the
pre-revolutionary heritage. In the last period of his life he developed
an 'organisational
science',which he called tektology, arguing that structural relations
could be
generalised as formal schemes as in relations of magnitude in
mathematics ('Filosofskaya
Entsiklopediya', Volume I, Moscow, 1960, p.177.). Such views were
clearly
distant from the propositions of dialectical materialism, historical
materialism
and Marxist political economy. Bogdanov commanded an extraordinary
influence
amongst the Russian left including Lunacharsky, Bukharin and Gorky. His
views
permeated the writings of Bukharin on questions of political economy,
historical
materialism and questions of science and technology.

Stalin pointed out that Yaroshenko underplayed the significance of
the
relations of production, overrated the role of the productive forces in
the
forward development of society and thereby reduced the relations of
production
to a component part of the forces of production. Yaroshenko virtually
abolished
the political economy of socialism by ignoring central questions such
as the
continuing existence of various property forms, of commodity
circulation and
value categories in general. The science of political economy was
sought to be
transformed into a classless rational organization of the productive
forces
reminiscent of Bogdanov. In contrast with this marked economism, Stalin
reiterated that contradictions persisted in the U.S.S.R. between the
relations
of production and the forces of production. If the directing bodies
implemented
incorrect policies then conflict was bound to emerge and in such
conditions the
productive relations would retard the development of the forces of
production.
The views of Yaroshenko recall the attempt of Bukharin to turn a blind
eye to
the eruption of class conflicts in the countryside and his desire to
freeze the
then existing capitalist production relations in agriculture and turn
attention
to 'technical revolution'. Bukharin openly stated in the 1930s that the
`revolution of the proletariat in our country enters its own new phase:
the
phase of technical revolution' (Bukharin, N.I., 'Metodologiya i
Planirovanie
Nauki i Tekhniki', Izbrannie Trudy, Moscow, 1989, p.135).
Such views
also became prevalent in the arid years after 1953. Socialism no longer
meant,
as it did for Lenin and Stalin, the abolition of classes and the
advance to
communism, but the preservation of the collective farm form of
property, the
development of the ideology of classless 'scientific-technical
advance', and the
generalized introduction of commodity-money relations. The views of
Yaroshenko
were entirely compatible with the establishment of market relations
after 1953.
The Soviet leadership was unconcerned with the retention or extension
of the
socialist relations of production and proved incapable of maintaining
the
continuously high level of development of the productive forces which
were
characteristic of the Stalin epoch. The experience of the economic
policies
followed after 1953 demonstrates the correctness of the understanding
that the
implementation of incorrect policies would lead to a situation where
the
relations of production would act as a brake on the productive forces.
Yaroshenko would seem not to be unaware of the implications of his
views.
Writing in 1992 he did not care to take up the issues posed for Marxist
political economy by the destruction of the U.S.S.R. He continued to
stress the
primacy of cognition of the laws of development of the productive
forces above
all social questions and reiterated his opinion of 1951 that the
central task of
the discussion on the Textbook of Political Economy of that year should
have
been to address the question of the rational, organizational
functioning of the
socialist economy. What was novel was that he took up the issue of
productive
relations under socialism and argued that the scientific organization
of the
economy presupposed the perfection of socialist productive relations
which in
contemporary parlance he identified as 'social-organizational
relations' and the
'economic mechanism' (Yaroshenko,L.D., 'Svidetel'stva Vremeni' in Igor'
Troyanovskii (ed), I. Stalin, 'Ekonomicheskie Problemy Sotsializma v
SSSR',
Peredelkino, 1992, pp.100-104.). By this logic Yaroshenko openly
advocated the
political economy of the period of Perestroika.

The question of the continued existence of the social contradiction
between
the relations of production and the forces of production had wider
ramifications. In 'The German Ideology' Marx held that the
contradiction between
the productive forces and productive relations lay at the root of class
collisions. Stalin's critique of Yaroshenko clearly establishes that in
his last
theoretical contribution he continued to recognise that contradictions
and class
struggle continued to exist in socialist society. As seen the criticism
of
Yaroshenko clearly stated that if incorrect policies were carried out
then
conflict would emerge that would retard the forces of production. At
the same
time Stalin considered that under conditions of socialism that matters
did not
usually come to such a pass that conflict would occur as it was
possible for
society to take timely steps to bring the lagging relations of
production into
conformity with the character of the productive forces. This was
possible
because socialist society did not contain obsolescent classes that
might
organise resistance. It did, however, contain backward and inert forces
that did
not realise the necessity of changing the productive relations. Stalin
considered that it would be possible to overcome such views without
bringing
matters to a conflict. This understanding was consistent with that of
Lenin who
had argued that under socialism contradiction continued but that
antagonism no
longer existed.

The discussion on the persistence of social contradictions in Soviet
Society
had clear implications for Soviet philosophy. Yudin pointed out that
many
philosophers including himself by arguing that there existed full
correspondence
between the relations of production and the productive forces in Soviet
society,
denied the existence of contradiction between the two. The philosopher
Glezerman
in his brochure 'Full Correspondence of Productive Relations and
Productive
Forces in Socialist Society' of 1951 had come unabashedly to this
conclusion and
did not care even to analyze the economic relations, productive forces
or
productive relations of Soviet society. Yudin concluded that the
negation of the
existence of any contradiction had led Soviet philosophy to the
construction of
lifeless and metaphysical schemes (Yudin,P.F., "Trud I.V. Stalina
'Ekonomicheskie
Problemy Sotsialisma v SSSR'- Osnova Dalneishego Razvitiya
Obshestvennikh Nauk",
Moscow, 1953, pp.23-24.).

Lenin in May, 1921 had emphasised that the product of the socialist
factories
was 'not a commodity in the politico-economic sense' and that it was
already 'a
commodity ceasing to be a commodity' (Lenin,V.I., 'Polnoe Sobranie
Sochinenya',
Volume 43, 5th edition, Moscow, 1963, p.276.) Yet we find in 'Economic
Problems'
that the Soviet economist A.I. Notkin expressed the view that the
implements of
production manufactured by the social sector were in fact commodities.
Stalin
rejected this understanding and stated that the implements of
production were
allocated to the enterprises and not sold, that the State retained
ownership of
the implements of production and that these were utilized by the
administration
of the enterprises as representatives of the State in accordance with
the State
plans. In 1948 a concerted attempt had been made by the Chairman of
Gosplan, N.A.
Voznesensky, which had materialised in the reform of wholesale prices
in January
1949 designed to end the system of state subsidies in heavy industry
and
transport. Voznesensky sought to introduce a minimal principle of
profitability,
some 3-5% of cost of production, into the branches of production
including heavy
industry and railway transport, thereby laying the basis for the
conversion of
the means of production into commodities (Trifonov, D.K., et al,
'Istoriya
Politicheskoi Economii Sotsializma, Ocherki', Leningrad, 1972, p.201.).
This
attempt to bring the law of value into operation in the basic means of
production was swiftly ended. Voznesensky was removed from his position
on the
initiative of Stalin on March 5th, 1949.

In 'Economic Problems' Stalin asserted that the sphere of commodity
production in the Soviet Union was limited and restricted: no
bourgeoisie was in
existence there being only associated socialist producers in the State,
the
cooperatives and the collective farms. Commodity production was limited
to items
of personal consumption. For this reason Stalin denied that commodity
production
in the Soviet Union could give rise to the economic categories of
capitalist
commodity production such as: 'labour power as a commodity, surplus
value,
capital, capitalist profit, the average rate of profit'. (Stalin,J.,
'Economic
Problems of Socialism in the USSR', Moscow, 1952, p.21). Such notions
were
prevalent amongst a section of Soviet economists as is clear from
Yudin's
critique of the anti-Marxist errors in the social sciences. Merzenev
and
Mikolenko upheld the opinion that labour power was a commodity in the
Soviet
Union just as in capitalist society. A. Yakovlev argued that the
category of
'capital' was applicable to Soviet conditions. The noted economist
Atlas
expressed the view that the average rate of profit operated in Soviet
economy (Yudin,
op. cit. p.23.).

A fundamental transformation of economic policy took place in the
period
between the death of Stalin and the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. The
planning
perspectives of laying the foundations of a communist society were
abandoned and
replaced by a consumerist welfare programme. Stalin's proposal,
approved by the
19th Congress of the C.P.S.U., to gradually introduce products-exchange
between
town and country in place of commodity circulation was effectively
ended from
May 1953 and a programme for extending commodity circulation was
adopted under
the slogan of expanding 'Soviet trade'. The sphere of Gosplan in the
Soviet
economy was progressively restricted with the expansion of the economic
rights
of the All-Union Soviet Ministries in April 1953 and by the extension
of the
powers of the Directors of Enterprises and the Ministries of the Union
Republics
in 1955. The system of centralized directive planning as law inherited
from the
Stalin period was ended from 1955 and replaced by a new system of
'coordinative
planning' by Gosplan and the All-Union and Union Republic Ministries.

The two years after the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. witnessed
further
radical changes in the running of the Soviet economy. Under Resolution
Number
555 of the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. dated 22nd May, 1957
the system
of allocation of the products of the State sector was brought to an end
and a
multitude of centralized sales organizations was created under Gosplan
to sell
industrial products manufactured by Soviet industry. The elimination of
Molotov,
Kaganovich and Saburov from the leadership of the C.P.S.U. had an
immediate
impact on economic policy. The transformation of the means of
production into
commodities was clearly accomplished by Resolution Number 1150 of the
Council of
Ministers of the U.S.S.R. on September 22nd,1957, by which enterprises
was
expected to operate on the basis of profitability.

The Third Edition of the 'Political Economy Textbook' which appeared
in 1958
accurately reflected the new economic system by stating that the means
of
production circulated within the State sector as commodities
(Ostrovityanov, K.V.,
et al, 'Politicheskaya Ekonomiya, Uchebnik', 3rd edition,
Moscow, 1958,
p.505.).

In his reply to the letters of A.V. Sanina and V.G. Venzher, Stalin
had
opposed the view that the Machine Tractor Stations, which owned the
basic
implements of production in agriculture, should be sold to the
collective farms
as, inter alia, a gigantic quantity of instruments of
production would
come within the orbit of commodity production. Sanina and Venzher were
not
isolated economists when they expressed their opinion. A year earlier
A. Paltsev
in his brochure 'On the Paths of Transition from Socialism' [Kiev,
1950]
suggested that with the growth of agricultural techniques in the MTS
and with
the merger of the smaller collective farms that there might be
established MTS
departments under the collective farms which would be closely linked
with the
work of a given collective farm (Yudin, op. cit., p.31-32.).
By this
measure Paltsev suggested in effect that the property of the whole
people, state
property, should be subordinated to the group property of the
collective farms.
The preliminary condition for dissolving the MTS was that the system of
allocating the principal instruments of production in agriculture be
terminated.
Under Prikaz Number 663 of Gosplan in July, 1957, Gosplan
ended the
system of allocation of agricultural machinery inherited from the
Stalin epoch
and created under its jurisdiction an organisation, Glavavtotraktorsbita,
with the function of selling the machinery required in the agricultural
sector.
In 1958 while formally demarcating himself from the earlier proposal
advanced by
Venzher, Khrushchev implemented the policy of dissolving the MTS and
selling the
implements of production in agriculture to the collective farms. As a
result the
means of production in agriculture as well as in industry now
circulated as
commodities. The Soviet publicist Vinnichenko who was close to Venzher
and
Khrushchev projected the view that 'distrust' of the peasantry was at
the root
of Stalin's opposition to the collective farms owning the basic
implements of
production in agriculture. This was not so. Stalin was merely upholding
the
Marxist position of Engels, who in a letter to Bebel in January, 1886,
unequivocally stated that the means of production in agriculture had to
be owned
by society as a whole so that the special interests of the co-operative
farmers
did not prevail over the general interests of the whole of society
(Engels to
A.Bebel in Berlin, 20-23 January 1889, in K. Marks and F. Engels,
'Sobranie
Sochneniya', Volume 36, Moscow, 1964, p.361.). Both Engels and Stalin,
moreover,
were of the view that the rich peasants would not be members of the
collective
farms. It is understandable that in those people's democracies where
the kulaks
(and even sections of the landlords) were members of the agricultural
producers'
cooperatives and where the principal implements of production in
agriculture
were owned by these cooperatives, Stalin's critique of Sanina and
Venzher would
receive an icy reception.

Augmenting the writings of Yudin was the article by Suslov published
in 'Izvestiya'
on 25th December 1952 which touched on the implications of the views of
N.A.Voznesensky as expressed in the brochure 'War Economy of the USSR
During the
Patriotic War' which had been published in 1947. The main gravamen of
the charge
against Voznesensky was that he had made a fetish of the law of value
which was
made to appear as though it regulated the distribution of labour in the
different branches of the Soviet economy.

It is quite clear that this was so for we find the following passage
in the
work: 'The law of value operates not only in the distribution of
products, but
also in the distribution of labour itself among the various branches of
the
Soviet Union's national economy. In this sphere the state plan makes
use of the
law of value to ensure the proper apportioning of the social labour
among the
various branches of the economy in the interests of socialism'
(Voznesensky, N.,
'War Economy of the USSR in the Period of the Patriotic War', Moscow,
1948,
p.118.).

What is at stake here? So far as the operation of the law of value
in Soviet
society was concerned much indeed hinged on this from the vantage point
of
Marxist economic theory. Marx and Engels considered that the law of
value was
operative only in societies where commodity production was present.
Value came
into operation with the rise of commodity production and ended its
activity with
the end of the commodity system (Engels, Letter to Karl Kautsky in
Zurich, in K.
Marx, 'On Value', Belfast, 1971, p. 5.). From the argument that value
regulated
the allocation of labour in the economy the only logical conclusion
which
emerged was that a system of generalised commodity production, i.e.
capitalism,
was prevalent in the Soviet Union. Voznesensky, then, raised
fundamental issues
on the very nature of a socialist society.

For Marx and Engels the law of value operated in a society in which
commodity
production was in existence: 'The concept of value is the most general
and
therefore the most comprehensive expression of the economic conditions
of
commodity production' (Engels,F., 'Anti-Duhring', Moscow, 1978, p.376).
A
society of commodity production is composed of `private producers'
where
commodities are `produced and exchanged against each other by these
private
producers for their private account (Ibid., p.240.).
Logically, in a
society where commodity production has been finished `with the seizing
of the
means of production by society, production of commodities is done away
with and
simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy
in social
production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation' (Ibid.,
p.343.), then the law of value is redundant. This is also the
implication of the
argument advanced in Marx's letter to Kugelmann of July, 1868, where he
argued:

'That this necessity of distributing social labour in definite
proportions
cannot be done away with by the particular form of social
production,
but can only change the form it assumes, is self-evident. No
natural
laws can be done away with. What can change, in changing historical
circumstances, is the form in which these laws operate. And the form in
which
this proportional division of labour operates,in a state of society
where the
interconnection of social labour is manifested in the private
exchange
of the private products of labour, is precisely the exchange value
of
the products' (Marx,K., 'Letters to Dr. Kugelmann', London, n.d.,
pp.73-74.)

For in a society where the interconnection of social labour takes
place in
the absence of a system of commodities i.e. without private producers,
then the
allocation of social labour would take place without the operation of
value.
This is confirmed by Engels where he argues that under socialism:

"It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to
know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its
production. It
will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its
means of
production, which include, in particular, its labour-power. The useful
effects
of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and
with two
quantities of labour required for their production will in the end
determine the
plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the
intervention of much-vaunted 'value' " (Engels,F., Ibid.,
p.375.).

This is further corroborated by Marx in his last sustained piece of
writing
on political economy, 'Comments on Adolph Wagner's Lehrbuch der
politischen
Okonomie' in 1879-80, where he rejected the idea attributed to him
by
Wagner that value would operate in a socialist society. Marx criticized
Wagner's
'premiss that in the "marxist social state" his (Marx's) theory of
value developed for bourgeois society will determine value' (Marx,K.,
'On
Value', p.28.).

Marx and Engels clearly excluded the operation of the law of value
in a
socialist society. Nevertheless, they accepted that in a transitional
socialist
society value would be retained where the small peasantry continued to
exist as
a class. Engels spoke of such a condition in 1884 in his article on the
'Peasant
Question in France and Germany':

'When we are in possession of state power we shall not even think of
forcibly
expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without
compensation),as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners.
Our task
relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in
effecting a
transition of his private enterprise and private possession to
cooperative ones,
not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social
assistance for
this purpose'.

In the U.S.S.R. even after collectivisation and the establishment of
group
property, private production in a restricted form continued to exist.
While
Gosplan could abrogate the operation of the law of value in the sphere
of state
industry, the state farms, and the MTS by regulating the allocation of
social
labour through a definite plan, that was not in the bounds of
possibility in the
collective farms, where even though the sown area, yield, the extent of
tractor-work, the number of socially owned cattle, the gross production
of
agriculture, the volume of compulsory payments and the payments in kind
to the
MTS came under the scope of directive planning, the state could not
plan the use
of the surplus commodity production or the use of labour-power of
definite
periods on definite tasks (Smolin,N., 'O zachatkakh produkto-obmena', Voprosi
Ekonomiki, No.1, 1953, pp.33-45.).

Voznesensky did not maintain the stand of Marxism for he held that
the law of
value operated in the distribution of labour among the various branches
of the
Soviet economy i.e. in the industrial as well as in the agricultural
sectors. In
propagating this view, Voznesensky stood apart from the general
consensus of
Soviet economists. In the editorial article of 1943 'Some Problems of
Teaching
Political Economy' it had been argued that 'the assignments of funds,
and labour
power to individual branches of production is effected in a planned
way,
according to the basic tasks of socialist construction' (Pod
Znamenem
Markzisma,No.7-8, 1943.). Similarly, in the following year the
doyen of
Soviet political economy, K.V.Ostrovityanov, argued that in a socialist
economy
'the distribution of labour and the means of production among the
various
branches of the national economy takes place not on the basis of a
fortuitous
movement of prices and the pursuit of profits, but on the basis of
planned
leadership making use of the law of value' (Ostrovityanov,K.V., 'Ob
osnovnikh
zakonomernostyakh razvitiya sotsialisticheskogo khozaistva', Bol'shevik,
No.23-24, 1944, pp.50-59.). Value did not 'direct the distribution of
social
labour' then but it played 'the role of an auxiliary tool of the
planned
distribution of labour and means of production among the branches of
Soviet
economy'.

Value did not govern the development of the production of the means
of
production for without its being restricted the allocation of the
necessary
funds for this sector could not be found. Yet Voznesensky in his
discussion on
establishing the appropriate proportions between production of the
means of
production and production of consumer goods for the purposes of
reproduction on
an extending scale argues in such a manner as to dispense with
indicating the
primacy of production of the means of production (Department 1) in
relation to
production of the means of consumption (Department 11) which was
necessary for
ensuring the continuous expansion of the national economy, relegating
the matter
to the section of the work relating to the post-war economy:

'If we divide Socialist production in the USSR into Department 1,
producing
means of production, and Department 11,producing articles of
consumption, the
value of the means of production set aside by the Soviet state for
enterprises
in Department 11 must obviously in a measure defined by plan correspond
to the
value of the articles of consumption set aside for enterprises of
Department 1.
Indeed, if enterprises of Department 1 were to be deprived of articles
of
consumption and enterprises of Department 11, of the means of
production,
Socialist reproduction on an extended scale would be impossible, in as
much as
the workers of enterprises producing means of production would be
deprived of
articles of consumption, while enterprises producing articles of
consumption
would be deprived of the means of production, i.e. fuel, raw materials
and
equipment' (Voznesensky, N., loc. cit.).

In contrast Ostrovityanov had recognised that value functioned only
at an
auxiliary level in planning the distribution of the means of production
(Ostrovityanov,K.V., op. cit.). More emphatically, the author
of the
1943 editorial had argued, giving the instance of the Kirov plant at
Makeyevka,
and the Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk combines, that value did not govern
the
development of the Soviet metallurgical industry, which had operated
for many
years from funds from the state budgets without yielding a profit (Pod
Znamenem Marksizma, op. cit.).

Suslov's critique of Voznesensky's booklet hit the mark. But
Voznesensky was
not just a theoretician for as Chairman of Gosplan under the Council of
Ministers of the Soviet Union he was in a position to implement a
policy of
extending the sphere of operation of commodity-money relations in the
Soviet
Union in 1948-49. The examination of the Leningrad case conducted under
Gorbachev revealed that M.Z. Pomaznev who was the Deputy Chairman of
the
U.S.S.R. State Supply Committee had complained that Gosplan under
Voznesensky
had reduced the national industrial plan for the first quarter of 1949.
Later
Shkiryatov of the Party Control Commission reiterated the charge and
the
U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers noted the failure of Voznesensky to
defend the
planning directives of the government (Izvestiya Ts.K. KPSS No
2,
1989.). The charge of reduction of the industrial plan is entirely
consistent
with the raising of wholesale prices for the goods of heavy industry in
January
1949 and the attempt to introduce the operation of profitability into
the
production of means of production and bring them into the sphere of
commodity-money relations. The removal of Voznesensky from Gosplan on
March 5th
1949 saw the beginning of the nullification of his economic policies by
several
stages so that wholesale prices were ultimately reduced to 30 percent
below the
1949 level. Voznesensky became a hero of those who wished to remodel
the Soviet
economy on the lines of a market economy: he was rehabilitated soon
after the
death of Stalin.

Suslov's article of 1952 took up one other question related to
value. He
criticised the long prevalent understanding among Soviet economists
that under
socialism value was 'transformed' or 'altered' in such a way so as to
serve
socialism. Stalin in 'Economic Problems' had rejected the view that
under
conditions of the socialist planned economy that this occurred for if
value
could be 'transformed' then economic laws could be abolished and
replaced by
other laws. The sphere of action of an economic law could be restricted
but it
could not be 'transformed' or 'abolished' (Stalin, J., op. cit.
p.97.).
The subjectivist notion of the 'transformation' of value categories
under
socialism permeated Soviet political economy. Voznesensky gave an
illustration
of this trend when he argued:

'The commodity in the Socialist society is free of the conflict
between its
value and use value so characteristic of commodity-capitalist society
where it
springs from private ownership of the means of production' (N.
Voznesensky, 'War
Economy', p.97). Was it possible that under socialism that the
commodity could
be emancipated from the conflict between use-value and exchange-value?
In the
U.S.S.R. value persisted because of the existence of two different
types of
property. If group property embodied mainly in the form of the
collective farms,
were elevated to the level of state property, then the basis for the
operation
of the remnants of value would cease to exist. But it was the commodity
per
se which Marx considered as the primary 'cell' or 'embryo' of
capitalism.
It could not be 'changed' or`transformed', only its scope could be
limited and
restricted.

Stalin's understanding on this question corresponded to the Marxist
position
of Engels who wrote to Kautsky in September 1884 in the following terms
when the
latter was drafting an article on the economic theories of the German Katheder
socialist economist, Rodbertus:

'You do a similar thing (i.e. as Rodbertus) with value. Present
value is that
of commodity production but with abolition of commodity production
value
'alters' itself also, that is, value in itself remains but in a changed
form.
But in fact economic value is one of the categories belonging to
commodity
production and vanishes with it (See Duhring, p.252-62), as
it did not
exist before it. The relationship between work and the product does not
express
itself in the form of value before commodity production, nor will it do
so after
it' (Engels,F., Letter to Karl Kautsky in Zurich, in K. Marx 'On
Value', pp.
5-6.).

For Engels a 'changed' value represented the oblique smuggling in of
the
operation of the law of value which was impermissible in a socialist
society. In
the writings of Kautsky this represented an isolated blunder, but
Stalin faced a
situation where virtually the whole of the economists in the U.S.S.R.
endorsed
this error.

The notion of 'transformed' value seems to have arisen as an
expression of
the dual need to criticise the idea that value could be arbitrarily
terminated
in the Soviet Union when the existence of the collective farms
necessitated the
continued preservation of commodity-money relations, and conjointly, to
articulate the reality that under conditions of the socialist planned
economy
the operation of value had an auxiliary, subordinate and restricted
role.
Nevertheless the conception of 'altered' value had in the Marxian sense
a clear
ideological content which was the reason why Stalin considered that the
formula
despite being current in the Soviet Union for a long time had to be
abandoned
for the sake of accuracy. The notion of 'transformed' value bore a twin
problem
as it still carried with it the idea that value could be arbitrarily
created or
abolished, and because it could easily become a theoretical lever for
justifying
the extension, rather than the contraction, of the sphere of operation
of
commodity-money relations as had clearly occurred in the instance of
Voznesensky.

With the rapid expansion of commodity-money relations in the Soviet
economy
after 1953 it was, perhaps, inevitable that the 'transformed' commodity
would
make a comeback. The 'Textbook of Political Economy' of 1954 argued
that the
socialist economy did not know the contradiction between private and
social
labour' (Ostrovityanov,K.V., et al, 'Politicheskaya
Ekonomiya,
Uchebnik', First edition, Moscow, 1954, p.442). Such a ratiocination
posed many
problems. It suggested that in a society which still required to use
commodity
production in a restricted fashion that social labour could be said to
exist in
a full form despite the fact the working class still received payment
in the
wage form with which it purchased consumer goods. It tended to imply,
moreover,
that the contradiction between concrete labour and abstract labour,
which in the
understanding of Marx could only be ended in communist society had
already been
resolved. It would also appear that private labour did not require to
be
terminated by bringing the labour power of the collective farm
peasantry, which
was not fully in the sphere of socialist planning for definite periods
on
definite tasks and which still preserved some of the features of
private labour
as the relationship of work and product was fully expressed in the
value form,
to the level of the social labour of the working class at that
historical stage,
controlling the property of the whole people. The 1954 edition of the
'Textbook
of Political Economy' brought Soviet political economy back to the
contradiction-free commodity of Voznesensky and it rejected the
position of
Stalin in 'Economic Problems' that the social contradiction between the
relations of production and the forces of production continued to
operate in
Soviet society.

In the years after 1953 the C.P.S.U. no longer considered itself as
the
vanguard party of the working class in the Leninist tradition but as a
party of
the whole people. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
which Marx
considered as continuing until the establishment of communism, was
replaced by
the state of the whole people. Before the economic reforms of 1953-58
it was
possible to argue as it was done by Stalin that commodity production in
the
Soviet Union was of a special type:

'commodity production without capitalists, which is concerned mainly
with the
goods of associated socialist producers (the state, the collective
farms, the
cooperatives), the sphere of action of which is confined to items of
personal
consumption, which obviously cannot possibly develop into capitalist
production,
and which, together with its 'money economy', is designed to serve the
development and consolidation of socialist production' (Stalin,J., op.
cit.,
pp. 20-21.).

But after the market reforms of 1953-58 when the means of production
began to
circulate as commodities the situation qualitatively changed. The
commodity
forms of production which existed under socialism were of special type
as Stalin
pointed out. After the reforms the restrictions placed on commodity
production
were removed and commodity forms began to embody the economic relations
of
another type. Marx in 'Capital' had established that the commodity, the
basic
cell of capitalism, contained within itself the embryo of both
wage-labour and
capital. The logic of rapidly expanding commodity production meant that
the
economic categories, such as labour-power, surplus value, capitalist
profit and
the average rate of profit, would appear once again. It is in this
context that
the programme for the establishment of Communist society put forward by
Khrushchev in 1961 has to be evaluated. In place of the contraction of
the
sphere of operation of commodity production and commodity circulation
in the
advance to communism the C.P.S.U. envisaged their further utilization.
The
programme withdrew from the task of the abolition of classes under
socialism and
refrained from restructuring the relations of production of Soviet
society. The
perspective put forward by Stalin of raising the group property of the
collective farms to the level of the property of the entire people was
ended. In
place of this the notion of a future merger between collective farm
property and
the state property was adopted under Khrushchev.

Paper presented at the International Seminar "Stalin Today"
held at the Moscow State University on 5th and 6th November, 1994.